Seafood Dining Experience Review

The first was a big letdown. Google Maps led us to an unclean neighbourhood spot with only one other table taken. The waitress handed us menus in Russian, not English. Our intuition told us to leave, but for whatever reason we stayed.

While parsing through the menu via translator, a big plate of flavourless deep fried frogs legs arrived to our table. Our server thought we had ordered it.

I actually enjoy frog legs (fried in butter with garlic), but I was really not in the mood for anything deep fried tonight. Ended up taking one bite and pushed the plate aside. Not only was it super oily, it was bland too. No salt, no seasoning, no flavour: not worth it.

Unimpressed, I’d already given up on this meal. The rest followed: greasy fried tiny crab legs, dry flavourless grilled prawn, etc etc. At least the plate of stir-fried greens and garlic was good. They ended up not charging us for the frog legs, so I’ll leave it at that.

Our first choice had a 20+ minute wait and we were hungry, so we chose an alternate option close by.

In hindsight, we should’ve waited for a table at the popular one. But this other option was good enough: decently tidy, mostly full, and most importantly, with live tanks of lobsters.

The menu showcased grilled lobster tail topped with their signature cheesy sauce, and we couldn’t resist. We ordered it, and our waitress led us over to the tanks where an employee “caught” the lobster for us.

I put caught in quotation marks because the whole scene raised some suspicions. Why did he move so fast… Was our lobster even alive… Is there a special tank of dying lobsters reserved for tourists?

It all happened so fast, we never got to ‘meet’ our dinner before the fisherman hurriedly escorted it over to the scale where it was weighed and we were given the price tag of 1.23 million VND, almost $50 USD.

It was pretty large though, and this was a specialish occasion, so we got it along with prawns, oysters, sea urchin, and greens, all which cost just 1/4 the price of the lobster.

Our food began arriving almost immediately to the table. That’s one of my favourite parts of eating in Vietnam so far, the sheer speed with which the food comes.

Anyway, the reason we started questioning the freshness in the first place is because we noticed some bitterness in the flavour of the lobster meat, cleverly masked behind the delicious cheese sauce.

Perhaps bitterness indicated poor conditions, maybe it was old or dying, or something to do with the conditions in the tank… But, it wasn’t meal-wreckingly bitter, and only in select parts of the meat.

Not bad at all, and I admit I primally devoured my portion while coated in cheese sauce. The whole meal was overall quite good and we left completely stuffed.

However, we were still both left with the impression that the lobster tail specifically could have been better. That there was something a bit off about it, despite being delicious.

Yes, but…

Only for the occasion.

Only for special occasions. And highly selectively.

I wish I could eat lobster regularly, but it is a delicacy. It’s indulgent and decadent and expensive and needs to be handled with skill and care.

Keep it for special occasions so that the magic of eating these kings of the sea never fades away.

I would say to wait for a table at the busiest seafood restaurants rather than settle for plan b, to make you get the quality worthy of the price tag.

Next time we’ll do that, but maybe with crab?